Stopping Brees, Saints shows Rams are real

Samson Ebukam of the Los Angeles Rams sacks Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints during the second half of the Rams' 26-20 victory Sunday at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Samson Ebukam of the Los Angeles Rams sacks Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints during the second half of the Rams' 26-20 victory Sunday at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

With four guys wearing watermelon shells as hats sitting just beyond one end zone and Gary Busey among the quasi-A-listers seated behind the other, in an historic stadium just across a busy freeway from downtown Los Angeles, the Rams continued to stay a step ahead in the “Fight for L.A.”

And more.

But as he walked from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum early Sunday evening, Drew Brees raised his eyebrows at the suggestion his New Orleans Saints were the most impressive victory so far for a fledging Rams team.

“Yeah,” Brees said with a shrug. “They’re a good team. We can play better, that’s all I can say.”

The Saints just didn’t seem all that impressed.

Penalties contributed to their lack of “rhythm,” both Brees and New Orleans coach Sean Payton said repeatedly. And that is how it often is in the NFL, where every team believes it can win every week if it only doesn’t beat itself.

Fact is, though, it appears increasingly likely the Rams are going to be a factor in December and maybe on into January, where they may again see the team they beat 26-20 in something of a slogfest on Sunday.

Both the Rams and Saints are now 8-3, atop their respective divisions. Sunday’s result moved the Rams up one spot to the NFC’s third seed and dropped the Saints one spot to fourth.

The league’s second- and third-ranked scoring teams, averaging better than 30 points apiece coming in, struggled to combine to surpass that total Sunday.

The Rams did just enough on both sides of the ball – and on special teams – to keep the Saints at bay and bury the visitors’ eight-game winning streak in the Coliseum turf.

“There's a reason that team had won eight games in a row,” Rams center John Sullivan said. “That's something special going on. For us to be able to come out and play our game and get a win was pretty good. … What we did is we stayed far enough ahead where they couldn’t catch up.”

And that was what was so notable. An exciting but unproven team did what it had to against a good opponent.

The Rams can score. Their kid quarterback, Jared Goff, is good enough to get the ball to a cadre of receivers that fight for the ball and fight for yards. Their kid head coach and offensive play caller, Sean McVay, is a relentless wizard.

The Rams, though, showed something more important Sunday to emphatically move from possible pretender to likely contender.

There is shutting down the offenses of the Jaguars, Seahawks, Giants and Texans. And then there is frustrating the NFL’s most prolific offense, which the Rams did on Sunday.

“The Wade Phillips factor,” Brees called it.

The Rams defensive coordinator, once again blessed with Pro Bowl-caliber players up front, pulled the strings to make the soon-to-be-39-year-old Brees look almost ancient at times.

Aside from a 75-yard touchdown run by Alvin Kamara in the first quarter and a frantic 42-second, 75-yard drive for a touchdown late, the Saints managed 196 yards. Their 346 total yards were 70 off their season pace.

(The Rams had the NFL’s fifth-ranked offense at 375 yards per and put up 40 more than that against the Saints.)

The Rams were 3-of-14 on third down and had to settle for field goals on four promising drives, but one of those came when they absolutely had to make it a two-score game with 2½ minutes to play.

Brees was very Brees in moving the Saints down the field to get to within six points after that, completing a 15-yard pass to Kamara with 1:45 remaining. But when Sammy Watkins recovered the ensuing onside kick, the Rams had done what it wasn’t certain they could.

The victory came on the heels of their first loss in five games, at Minnesota, the NFC’s current second seed. What follows for the Rams is a game at Seattle (7-4) and then home on Dec. 4 against Philadelphia, the class of the NFC at 10-1.

The Rams, remarkably self-possessed for such a young group, speak only of progress, not playoffs. But they know what they did Sunday.

“When you stop a team that hot, it is pretty tough to do,” linebacker Robert Quinn said. “Guys were a little frustrated after last week. The bar is so high here, we keep challenging ourselves, and the caliber of team we faced today, it was a big challenge. We made the plays we had to when we needed to.”

With the Chargers having won five of seven and the Rams five of their past six, there appears to be something of a buzz – at least a murmur – that both of L.A.’s NFL teams could be headed to the postseason.